Nurses are not superheroes

Medicine is changing. Hospitals are changing. It has become about business, money. There is no choice in the matter. Its reality.

There is so much emphasis on patient care satisfaction. On standardization of everything across the corporation. More and more complex procedures and polciies are evolving. Lost in all of this is the nurse.

I really wonder if there are other jobs that change as rapidly as nursing. It is constant, overwhelming change. Change it is hard to keep up with. I've given up trying to keep up with it. I try to remember the important stuff and ignore the rest.

Nursing has become a complex job with increasing complex technology and procedures. Nurses handle patients with LVADs, ECMO, hypothermia treatment to name a few. People are being kept alive today that never would have had a chance even ten years ago. Who is keeping them alive? Nurses.

With the emphasis on patient satisfaction, we are expected to handle a diversity of patients with all their perisonality disorders and neuroses with a smile on our face. When it comes down to it, we are expected to be superhuman.

With all the rapid change, emphasis on the bottom line, patient satisfaction - no attention is given to employee satisfaction. We are just expected to grind it out and be happy about it. The thing that is missing in all of this change in medicine is the lack of caring about the employee. What all of these hospitals fail to understand is that if the employees aren't happy, the patients won't be happy. The lack of understanding of that will be their downfall.